Black Truffle present In Real Life, the latest in a flurry of releases from Berlin-based guitarist and composer Julia Reidy. Having drawn acclaim for solo performances on 12-string acoustic guitar that bridge microtonality, "American primitive" stylings, and classic minimalism, Reidy's recent releases have utilized an increasingly broad sonic palette, fleshing out guitar-based composition with electronics, field recordings, and -- most strikingly -- heavily auto-tuned vocals. On In Real Life, Reidy pushes one step further, crafting an epic LP-length suite that moves from abstracted song to lush electronics and explorations in contemporary musique concrete. Beginning with a passage of eerie electronics and creaking percussive interjections, Reidy's heavily auto-tuned voice quickly takes center stage. Surrounded by explosions of electric guitar and synthesized arpeggios, the auto-tuned voice delivers a melancholic ode, bringing together poetic images to reflect on the instability of experience and mutability of identity in a contemporary world saturated by digital technology. This concern with the unsettled relationship between the physical and digital is reflected musically by the constantly shifts in emphasis between Reidy's physically demanding guitar-picking and the various forms of synthesis deployed. Similarly, the dynamic imagery of cutting, shattering, and "racing streams" present in Reidy's lyrics also serves to characterize the structure of In Real Life, which ceaselessly shifts between distinct episodes. The song-based opening, long sequences of frenetic 12-string guitar shadowed and eventually overtaken by synth tones, passages of delicate chiming harmonics, electro-acoustic cut-ups -- each flows seamlessly into the next, often recurring throughout the record's duration, which lingers over interstitial moments between these episodes. Artwork by Suze Whaites; LP design by Lasse Marhaug. Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture, Tokyo. Vinyl cut at 45rpm for maximum fidelity by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

Brace, Brace is Julia Reidy's spellbinding return to Slip, rendering a shimmering, introspective solo dialog on 12-string guitar laced with soaring but unsettling vocal processes and spectral electronics. With an uncanny, even unsettling ability to hold her listener's ear-gaze, Julia's follow-up to 2017's Dawning On finds the Berlin-based Aussie continuing to recontextualize her instrument with elegant precision to yield a sublime tension between her heavy-lidded vocals and iridescent strings. In Julia's remarkable opener "Of Neither", strings fluidly cascade from her fingertips into an amniotic soundsphere of field recordings and gently fleeting synth figures. When combined with the deep dreaming AI texture of her autotuned vocals and wind-blown harmonica, the effect recalls a sort of midnight Tuareg blues half-remembered from a fevered sleep. It's deeply beautiful stuff, periodically fading into and out of the light, only to return with more intense inflection and density, yet ever-more spaced out, leading to the internal pocket of "Lament" and its achingly coaxed secrets. With recipients suitably defocused and in pliable state, Julia takes the whole other side to play on that line between organic and processed material, slipping from noirish, filmic intrigue into the middle distance where her rustic coruscations twirl in a set dance with their spectral reflections. RIYL: John Fahey, Hope Sandoval, Talk Talk, Yoshi Wada, Jim O'Rourke. Edition of 300.

"Recently we touched base with the New Zealand ex-pat guitarist Dean Roberts. He's living in Berlin these days, teaching, playing and staying out late. When asked if there were any interesting, unheralded players we should know about he immediately mentioned Julia Reidy. Julia is also a guitarist currently based in Berlin, but the city from which she's apart is Sydney, NSW. While there she was embroiled in the Australian improv scene, and played with the likes of Jon Rose et al. She was focused exclusively on electric guitar back in those days. Since relocating to Europe she has split her concentrations between electric and acoustic, playing in two duos -- Tennis of All Kinds (with bassist Adam Pultz Melbye) and PALES (with percussionist Samuel Hall) -- among other settings. On All Is Ablaze Ms. Reidy plays both an acoustic 12 string and an electric, both of which sound unusually raw and exciting in her hands. Each side of the record consists of a single piece, the A is 'All Is Ablaze,' the flip, 'Thatched Steel & Rain.' In his notes, Dean writes about the beautiful contrasts of the music's textures, drawing apt comparisons to everyone from Robbie Basho to Tom Cora. As these namechecks might suggest, Julia's first LP embraces a nearly unknowable field of sonic detailing. Her technique can sound precise and smudgy at almost the same moment. The intent of her journey seeming to shift with her breathing patterns. There is an organic depth and weight to the music here, displaying an exceptionally wide breadth of influence, knowledge, chops and imagination. We would like to thank Mr. Roberts for introducing us to the music of Julia Reidy. You will soon be doing the same." --Byron Coley, 2017 Edition of 300.